Green on the Vine

Today's post is all about the vegetables that come from vines--zucchinis, squash and pumpkins.

My coworkers were nice enough the share the spoils of their gardens with me this week. So on Wednesday I went home with a boxful zukes and squash, which is really more than I can eat alone. In order to have some help eating it, it has to be served in such a way as to entice the Hubby to eat his greens. Basically that means I fry it. I've mentioned the Hubby seal of approval on the squash fritters recipe before. Well, they now have the coworker seal of approval too. I took the leftovers into work and the ladies gobbled them down. That is why I have no pictures-they et it all up!

Well, once your start taking food to work, you start getting requests. One of the ladies I work with saw my box of goodies and asked if I would bring in my zucchini bread (well zucchini cake really, but it has a vegetable in it therefore redeeming it's cake-like qualities). I was tickled to death so I made it and brought it in right away. Also, giving me an excuse for not taking any pictures.

But I did take pictures of my flourishing pumpkin plants, which have since doubled in size.


And they were already huge to begin with! (For some reason this picture loads sideways. I can't figure it out. So cope with me here by turning your head to the right.)


Most of the leaves are larger than my hands! I am having some high hopes for canning pumpkins this year. I want to try my hands at something other than pumpkin bread and have another go at developing my own pumpkin cheesecake recipe. (My first pumpkin cheesecake was a little gooey.) I'm sure I'll have plenty of volunteers to help me dispose of any "failed" experiments.

Keepin' it Green

Although, I haven't mentioned much about it this year, We (and by we, I mean me and the Hubby by default) are participating in One Local Summer. This past weekend was a visit to see the In-Laws and to purge their garden of any unnecessary growths, like beans, corn, okra and cukes. Granted a visit with the folks is about a three hour round trip, so it doesn't reduce our carbon footstep as much as a hardcore OLS might desire, but we did kill two birds with one stone getting veggies and visit in at the same time. It was a good visit and I'm so glad they are willing to share with us.

We immediately fried and ate the okra, so I have no pictures of that. I will share with you this is little tidbit: Before my husband married me, he didn't eat fried okra, or fried squash for that matter. After I made it the first time against many loud localizations, he decided it was good stuff. It warms my heart.

The beans were pre-canned for us by my wonderful MIL, but unfortunately she and I do not agree how to can beans. She likes hers fresh. extra fresh. As in so turgid you could break your teeth on them. I side with the extra limp overcooked in ham camp. It's okay. I own crockpot "the green beans' best friend"! Now, I only have to cook twelve cans of green beans to an acceptable level of limpness. YUM! Still no photos.

Last year I only had enough ears to make a few jars of corn salsa, but this year they sent us home with 2 five gallon buckets of sweet corn. After about 5 seconds of thought, we decided on turning it into creamed corn. I really have to thank my Hubby here, because all his years experience helping his parents do the exact same thing turned into 11 jars fabulous looking creamed corn. Although, after two days of husking and creaming and canning corn we aren't really excited about trying it, but I am sure we will love it this winter.


They also sent us home with an armful of cukes, which I immediately pickled. It made about 2 pints worth of pickles. I didn't care for last year's pickles (the Hubby ate them all), so we are trying a new instant picking mix this year. Being the pickle snob I am, I really hate the artificial yellow coloring added to this mix to make it look more picklely. (You like that word? Me too.) Hopefully, I will be able to get over this visual deterrent and eat me some good pickles this year.



And at last my tomatoes are starting to spit out ripe yumminess which I can shove into jars and enjoy later this winter as seen above. They will be great for stewing and adding to our favorite lentil soup recipe.

So, excuse me while I go find more things to squash into jars.

Chives

Baked Potato Night at our house. The one dinner were you basically eat sin on a plate and no one will chastise you. That's two slices of real bacon crumbled on what's got to amount to at least 8 oz sour cream my friends. Unfortunately, the only thing local on this potato are the chives--They came straight out of my garden, but daggum are they good!

It's that time again

Spring time always ruins my knitting mojo. The call of nature totally overwhelms all my senses until I obey it's whims. Instead of knitting, most of my time is spent walking in concentric circles in my yarn prodding the grass to cover the blank areas, squatting in the middle of our gravel driveway at early hours of the morning to pull weeds and sometimes I water my tomato plants (with chives!) and daydream about what I will do with them and my new pressure canner. (That last bit sounds a little sadistic doesn't it?) It's also the time when OLS gets back into full swing.

Last year I learned that any attempt to include locally grown food in my family's diet is a good attempt. Simply put whether it side dish or main course, I'm not in a contest with anyone. If I had not come to realize this guiding belief, I would be much more disheartened and possibly even unwilling to participate. I remind myself that I want to enjoy this experience with my own little credo.


Pumpkin Cheesecake. The pumpkin was grown locally by one of the our coworkers last year and frozen until I decided what I needed to be: my first OLS dessert.

I was going to post the recipe I used until I realized that it was woefully wrong (even lacking cooking instructions) and I apparently didn't follow any of it other than the 1 lb of additional pumpkin, 1/4 t cinnamon and 1/4 t nutmeg. The hubby likes to sprinkle a bit of ground clove and a lot more cinnamon across the top of his servings.

I love cheesecake, but I can't say that loved this one. A little undercooked it tasted and felt more like pumpkin pie of which I am not a big fan. (BTW, the Hubby does like pumpkin pie.) However, all the ladies at work liked it or were exceptionally nice to me about it Friday when I took it in. I saved a piece for the pumpkin's originator and made her promise to send lots more pumpkins my way this year, because I have a pressure canner and I intend to use it.

Composting

This compost is for all my 'local summer' readers and for any of my environmentally conscious friends.

Today I would like to talk about recycling, but maybe not in the manner in which you are thinking. Recently, I was speaking with a friend who purchased a $50 dollar stainless steel container to reduce their kitchen waste by removing the green waste from their normal trash. This container is meant to compost the leftover fruit and vegetable matter right there in the kitchen. I was happy she had begun recycling in the this manner, but was confused by the need to spend $50 to do it. Certainly, she could have done it cheaper I thought, but kept my mouth shut so as not to discourage her in the slightest.

However, the thought has been gnawing at me for days, so I must divulge. There are several methods for kitchen composting, as mentioned previously some are more costly than others. If you desire a certain look and feel for your compost, then you may be willing to pay a bit more for it. I am not willing, because let's face it folks-I'm cheap. I pick wild (read: free) blackberries and the tiny pears out of my yard (read again: free) to make jelly with. I grow my own vegetables and can them for later eats (read: cost of baggies). And to top it off, I'm interested in making better (free) dirt for those veggies through composting.

It would follow that my method for kitchen composting was free and involved recycling. For starters, this is my kitchen's natural state. I have not cleaned up in the least for this photo to show where my container lives. Have you spotted it yet? It's a plastic coffee container from work. F0lger's claims to lock in the freshness with this container. It has no fancy carbon filter to block any 'stinks' from escaping. I have yet to have an issue with smell and I leave stuff in there for quite some time. Sometimes with the lid propped open to help dry out my remains, because mine is not built for composting IN the kitchen but storage of kitchen wastes until I can throw them outside. What kinds of things an I throwing in there you ask? Let's see...There's some orange peels, a couple of family sized tea bags (bag included), some coffee grinds (filter included) and I happen to know way down under the filters there is second layer of orange peels and some apple bits under that too. Reciting that, I realize that I have not cooked a dinner containing vegetables in some time apparently. I blame it on the night job. Then after a sometimes very long while it goes here-in our recycled palettes nailed into composting "stalls." This shape is supposed to allow me to "turn," or flip the material to let over to increase decomposition by allowing helpful microbes access to oxygen. I am lazy. This doesn't happen in the winter months and only like three times in the summer months. It only means that my compost will take longer to deteriorate into good dirt than some one else's compost. I am okay with this.
This is mainly composed of leaves raked up from the yard. Leaves are high in carbon and need a lot of nitrogen to compost well. Kitchen scraps and other green vegetation have some of the highest levels of nitrogen available. I read what ratio of carbon to nitrogen I was supposed to have in my heyday of ingesting as much composting knowledge as I could find, but have since forgotten it. I do recall that what the literature referred to as "manure" or in realistic terms, poop, has the best carbon to nitrogen ratio and is ultimately what you are striving for (not poop the ratio). They also do not recommended that you put pet wastes on compost if you plan to use it on anything edible as it contains some not-human-friendly strain of e. coli. Though, common sense would state that pet poos are prolly just fine if you plant on using it in flower beds or the yard as more than likely it is already there. I just leave mine in the yard and let the mower deal with it. Wasn't that fun!

In case you are still reading and possibly even excited by this new concept of recycling. I can show you other things that have made it into my compost piles. Other bits of kitchen refuse are egg shells (thrown on once they have dried out in the kitchen), onion skins albeit a bit blurry, grass from mowing the law, more coffee and filters

One Local Winter

Yesterday the Hubby and I drove to the country for some apple cider. (Ha! "Drove to the country" like we don't already live there! Let me just live in my fantasy alright?!) His family is originally from that area and knows where to get the best apple cider. So we drove three hours (round trip) to a little off the beaten path place to get two gallons of the finest cider. For those of you know don't know in April some in the South suffered a huge frost and most orchards lost their produce. Even the pear tree in our back yard lost all it's blossoms and we had absolutely no pears this year. Not exactly the best circumstances for growers, many of whom had to buy apples to stay in business.

At any rate we drove to the only place we are "allowed" to buy cider, as decreed by the Hubby. I don't mind the trip, because M is always in a fantastic mood, so he's most agreeable to anything and I enjoy the idea of supporting my "local" farmers. Although, it may not have been their produce M and I were gulping down this year, I still think it's important to support family businesses. It's a really one of the main reasons I starting "eating local." Some people did it for the environment, which is great. I did it to keep my money in the community-the better produce, cheaper prices and smaller environmental footprint are all added bonuses.

As we shopped, I noticed most of the "prepared" foods (honeys, jellies, ciders) were from areas and growers need me. What a happy little surprise! I even got myself a bottle of local blackberry cider as a little something extra.Yes, I said we bought two gallons of apple cider. The other one is sitting mostly empty in the fridge right now.

Eating Local during the Winter

This summer I joined up with Liz and many others as we tried to support our local farmers and incorporate more of their foods into our daily meals. I wasn't as gung ho about it as some, but I did add more fresh fruits and veggies to my plate. Let me tell you, it's habit forming. You get used to sharing food, tips and recipes with friends, neighbors and where I live, coworkers.

So when one of the Hubby's coworkers was passing out free pumpkins, I jumped at the deal. She gave us three beauties, which I had big plans for cooking up and freezing to enjoy in the coming cold stretch.

First I halved all the pumpkins, they were smallish-a little smaller than the size of a basketball, and clean out all the seeds.


Next, I cooked them cut side down in a enamel roasting pan at 375 F until tender about one hour. The less flesh inside the pumpkin the less time you need to bake it. My most meaty pumpkin took 1 hour 15 minutes.

Then you simply scoop out the edible parts with a large spoon directly in to your blending machine of choice. I love my Cuisinart for this job. The seeds, and shells can get thrown into you compost pile. If you don't have a compost pile, just throw them into the woods more than 20 feet from the house. My parents live in the suburbs on a 1/2 acre lot and they do this. They have no issue with rats, raccoons, squirrels or any other pests.

This reminds me a lot of how we make sweet potato souffle.


Blend forever, or until smooth. Gosh, I can smell pumpkins from this!

Once blended, pour into baggies, or containers of your choice. I have used non-freezer, store-brand ziplocks for this and have no issues. The main goal is to get as much air out as you can. If you are freezing a lot of produce, a vaccum sealer/foodsaver may be a wise investment. Alternatively, if you have a pressure canner, you can bottle/can the pumpkin puree.

Then pull out later to enjoy in your pies, breads, muffins and anything else you can think of! Tomorrow more local foods!

We joined Netflix

...so my blogging has been lacking. You may not know that we do not own cable tv, nor local channels, though we do own a tv (or two) , a dvd player and we live in the sticks. Hello, Season 2 of House; you are a wonderful thing. I think that I may love you Netflix...and Hugh Laurie. Oh, and Dr. Chase has beautiful hair and a lurvely accent.

It's been hard to get anything other than sitting on my bum done, but I have found some time to knit (at work when I'm away from the tv). Two of these things are recycled FOs, and one of these things is my current work progress. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint. It's still missing parts.

It's almost midnight and the bathroom has the most light.

And I made a cop out OLS dinner of Vegetarian Enchiladas. I am super lazy, so this entire meal only used locally grown banana peppers-i.e. peppers brought to me directly by my co-worker.


It's my not-so-blogging-secret to get my Hubby to eat and enjoy one less meal with meat a week. We're not vegetarians, and we do enjoy our animal products. It just that the Hubby may enjoy it a little to much. It's not healthy to poop meat is it? I found this recipe in my Betty Crocker recipe gifted to me just prior to my wedding by my mother, who gave up cooking dinner when I was in high school and apparent expected my to immediately serve my husband dinner at 5pm upon my impending D-day...But I digress.

This recipe could certainly be made using only local foods for the hardcore even the tortillas and some of the dried herbs.* However, I am not hardcore. I am lazy, poor and the depressed owner of a tried and true brown thumb.

Vegetarian Enchiladas
2 cups Monterey Jack cheese (8oz)
1 cup Cheddar cheese (4oz)
1/2 cup sour cream
2 T chopped fresh parsley
1 medium onion chopped (1/2 cup)
1 green bell pepper chopped(1/2 cup)
2 green chiles chopped (remove seeds for less heat)
1 can tomato sauce (15 oz)
2/3 cup water
1/4 t ground black pepper
1 T chili powder
1 1/2 t oregano
1/4 t cumin
1 clove garlic chopped
at least 8 tortillas

Mix cheeses, sour cream, parsley, peppers and onions. Set aside.

Heat remaining ingredients except tortillas, until boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes, stirring ocassionally. Dip tortillas in sauce coating all sides. Scoop filling into tortillas; roll up and place seam side down in a large baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas.

Bake uncovered for 20 minutes or until bubbly. Garish with additional cheeses, sour cream and chopped onion if desired.

As you can see this recipe is easy deviated from and stays delicious. I used regular taco shells instead of tortillas, premixed shredded monterey jack and cheddar cheese coated with taco seasoning, banana peppers instead of chiles, 1 cup of bell peppers instead of 1/2 cup, dried parsley instead of fresh and I completely forgot about the oregano. It was still yummy!

*p.s. Drying your own herbs would be a wonderful way to stock up for winter and super easy.

By request

Faith asked about the recipe for the spaghetti sauce I canned, so I thought I'd share with everyone. I'll give you as much detail as possible, but I didn't exactly follow the recipe. Which is nothing unusual in this house and it drive the hubby nuts. He HATES it when I don't follow a recipe exactly. He's a to-the-letter-man. Recipe says one cup and two TBSP water, he breaks out the measuring spoons. I pretty much cheat and just add a little more than the one cup mark in the measuring glass. Needless, to say when we cook "together" I find myself being strictly supervised to make sure I don't get careless. Doesn't bother me, I find it humorous.

But back to canning tomato sauce recipes. (Can I state it like that? Oh well, y'all know what this is about anyway.) For canning I pretty much rely on the book "Stocking up" by Carol Hupping and Staff. I bought my book used for around $8.50 including shipping here.**



Her tomato sauce recipe*** is for canning or freezing as follows:
5 lbs Italian plum tomatoes (about 25)
1 TBSP Olive Oil
1 Onion, chopped
1 Clove garlic, crushed
1 TBSP chopped green peppers
2 TBSP finely chopped carrots
2 TBSP finely chopped celery
2 TBSP finely chopped parsley
1 tsp oregano
1 bay leaf
pepper to taste
1/4 cup lemon juice (if canning)

You can use the tomatoes with or without their skins. I chose with because it was less prep work and you get to keep more of the "good stuff" (i.e. vitamins, minerals, nutrients) apparently found just below the skin according to Carol. Just wash, cut them up, scoop out the innerds/seeds and puree the heck out of them! This the most important step! It will determine how smooth your sauce is! The skins do create a texture to the sauce, and no amount of slicing, dicing, or blending will get them PERFECTLY smooth. If smoothness is your game, you may want to parboil the tomatoes and remove their skins first. Set aside.

Then grab a large pot (enamel or stainless steel) and saute the onions and garlic in the oil. According to the directions, next stir in the green peppers, carrots, celery and tomatoes. I know my hubby and myself and I know that if I put in carrots or celery or peppers we would freak out a little, so I just skipped that part. (Side note: This will of course reduce the volume of your sauce.) Then add the parsley, oregano, bay leaf and pepper. I recommend fresh herbs for this, as you are stewing the tomatoes in a later step and the dry herbs are a little too potent. TRUST ME! I didn't add the bay leaf, because I normally DON'T put it in my spaghetti. (If you do include the bay leaf, be sure to take it out before canning.) Also I added salt, because I normally DO put it in. The exact amount of salt I couldn't tell you, because it's measured in the palm of my hand. (Sorry that's the best measurement I got for ya!) Salt in high enough quantities is a preservative, and I added so little that I wasn't worried about it affecting the pH, water availability, nutrients or anything else which determines good living conditions for bad microbes.

Next stand there forever (one to two hours) simmering until thickened. I knew I was adding back a quarter cup of lemon juice, so I simmered until it was a little thicker than what I wanted. Once done pour into jars leaving 1/2 inch head space and place into boiling-water bath canner for 35 minutes. If freezing DO NOT add lemon juice, and simply pour into freezer containers.

Yeild: 2 pints. (Yes, I realize that was a lot of work for 2 stupid pints).

So there you have it. Basically, make spaghetti sauce the way you normally make it for your family, but with the addition of pureeing the tomatoes, simmering longer than normal and adding some lemon juice for canning. Tomatoes are naturally high in acid, so they do a good job of producing an unfavorable environment for bad most microbes on their own. I wouldn't say that the lemon juice is UNnecessary, as it helps drop the pH that much further down, and we didn't notice any changes in the taste. Better safe than sorry.

However, as with any food we ingest mistakes can be deadly. I doubt the addition of salt I added changed the pH enough to improve the living conditions to a viable state for any germs, as salt also binds up water and makes it unusable for those very same germs. So feel free to experiment with your "formula" a little! It's not the end of the world if you mess up though. One of the things that Stocking Up emphasizes (and rightly so) is that you must observe the jars you canned when you are using them. Some mistakes are okay, but ones that produce funky smells, discoloration, or break the seal (i.e. you can pop the top of the can/jar) are no-no's to throw out.

Happy canning!

**I am not endorsing any one particular seller. BE SURE you check shipping costs, the condition of the book, etc. as these are independent sellers listed at one site!!! Although, I had no problems with my purchases (actually both came quite quickly), I suppose you could have the same issues you run in to on E-Bay or Amazon with third parties. I bought used, because it was cheaper and-I thought-more environmentally friendly. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! But of course you could always borrow it from your local library to try it out first or if you just wanted the one recipe.

***I have no problem sharing this one recipe, but if you like it please buy the book or go to the library. I do not intend to post any more. After all these recipes are copyrighted and I'm sure Carol and her staff would like to get the credit and money they deserve for their hard work.

The Bounties of Fall?

What OLS week is it? 5? 6? Okay, so I have not been real dedicated to finding local produce these past few weeks...oops! The good news is that the Hubby and I will still be enjoying our local bounty this fall and winter.

We are hoping to try out (from left to right) the oven-dried and home grown tomatoes in an herb bread, the corn from M's parents as corn relish on who knows what, and some homemade spaghetti sauce again from our very own tomatoes (which I happen to know is good, because last night we ate the last bit of sauce which would only partially fill a jar after canning it.)


We are also the Best Blackberry Scavengers Ever in all the world and after gathering hundreds of blackberries for this year's jelly, we also managed to acquire enough (about another 4 quarts) for M to make a wild blackberry wheat ale. The house is a little hoppy-smelling right now from all the open cooking of the ingredients on the stove, but it should thin out as the beer ferments in a closed container. Next year, I think I should demand a Wild Blackberry Wine for myself. Oh, and maybe a blackberry cobbler too. And that we should possibly plant our own bushes, because we are blackberry-aholics!!! Jellies, beers, wines, cobblers....anything else we need to try?


As a side note to all of those who are home brewers and pet owners; Your dog will eat the hops you filtered out and set aside to throw on the compost pile. Nothing goes to waste in this house, not even the compostables. (I will warn you though, I have no idea how this is going to affect PoPo's system. We are horrible pet owner's and we experiment to see if there is anything she won't eat out of our hands. No, you're not supposed to give your dog table scraps it upsets their delicate digestive system, blah, blah, blah...The vet says PoPo is in outstanding health, minus the pollen allergies. So we play this little game to amuse ourselves and I don't see PoPo complaining.)

Stay Tuned: I am trying to grow some pumpkin seedling from my Grandmother's heirloom milk pumpkin seeds!

Create

What in a person drives them to create? Even, though I minored in psychology while I was in college and tried to take as many courses as I could fit under my graduate degree, I still don't know. And I don't care. I just hope it never stops.

The urge to plant and grown things, be they for asthetic value or edible, arrives with the spring every year and I daren't resist. And should they be edible, the need to east them up fresh or package them up and save them for later only refuels my need to plant again and in greater numbers next spring.

This is only one half the cukes pickled.
(Not pictured are the dried tomatoes and canned corn relish.)

The thrill that runs down my spinal after turning the heel on a sock never ends. The halfway point is reached BABY!

Check it out my first short row heel!

The feeling of accomplishment that comes from creating a whole meal or just one dish, and seeing it gooble down by many mouths, especially when you've gone the extra mile and used the homegrown zucchini you got from your neighbor.

Zucchini Bread in the front and Banana Nut Bread in the Back

Sense of finality when you are able to join seams, make yarn tails disappear and sew on the final button that floods my fingertips at the end of garment.

But lets not get crazy. After all that I just want to throw it across the room and smile with satisfaction as it lays crumpled in heap on the floor. And you can bet I won't be scrubbing any dirty dishes.

Me and the Tortoise: We're like this.

*crosses fingers*

I am quickly learning that a local summer doesn't just mean supporting the random local farmers in my area, but can also mean the building of a supportive community. When I got into composting about a year ago, I was reading books written in the 70's. Not the most up to date literature, but be far more exciting to read. (I especially liked it when one book mentioned that you could get a mulching blade for you mower for about five bucks!) These reads were supplemented with more modern excerpts, but the science behind them stays relatively the same. Unfortunately, most authors discussed getting together with neighbors and having a community plot or garden (where composting could be used or materials gathered from) which isn't so common anymore, but was something of which I was completely jealous.

I mean how many of us actually know our neighbors well enough that you could walk over and say, "You know, I was thinking we could plant some tomatoes right here on the property line. Any other vegetables you want to put there?"..."Great! You go get the garden hose and I'll bring the shovel."

Not me. I actually pray for the day when we get enough money to build a privacy fence between us so that I don't have to stare at the LOGGING TRUCK THEY PARK IN THE FRIGGIN' EASEMENT!!! But that's an issue for another day...

Our dinners aren't over the top, nor are they even all that "from the farm," but they are shared between friends and family. What I mean is that the produce M and I are eating is brought to work by coworkers and split up among friends. The spoils of our home gardens are shared with no additional mileage or work between us that doesn't already exists. This really excites me!
Slow and steady wins the race people.

Brunswick stew (from a can-our favorite). Home grown and canned green beans from the In-laws. One can down 23 to go...Home grown okra fried by moi. Also from the In-laws. Both with zero mileage, as we got them as a surprise when we were down for a visit and to pick up an item they had been storing for us, which required a truck. However, if you want to get technical they live over an hour from us, so that's about 160 miles round trip. Still, considering we were going anyway-zero miles. (Actually, I didn't go just the Hubby went. I had to work that day. YUCK!)

Speaking of the spoils of the home garden. Laurie, you think you have huge produce--Check out this cuke!

*We lovingly refer to this cuke as 'the billy club.'

One day I just looked down and there was this gianormous produce there, hidden under one of the leaves of the cuke plant. No, I seriously didn't see it under the leaves. Yes, that means the leaves are insanely huge. We've covered this before.

We've eaten cucumber salads. I've taken them to work. We pickled 5 pints of cukes WITHOUT the aforementioned billy club. My one remaining cucumber plant has grown so large and produced so many cukes I'm running out of ideas. Anyone know what to do with a crap ton of cucumbers? Anyone? Bueller? Really is a cuke this large necessary? (Get your mind out of the gutter before you think of any ideas for it.) Just what in the world do you do with it other than knit it a sweater and give it a name?

Enough is enough! Moving on, I do have some more gardening photos I'd like to share and I haven't completely given up on knitting just yet. (I have a FO coming your way soon!) But it's my bedtime and I'll be cranky if I don't get some sleep. Good Night!

*Please ignore the fact that I look retarded in this photo. It's for the sake of humor alright? Normally, I am much more appealing. Okay. Not really, but normally I don't have devil red eyes.

The Next Dinner

I am very quickly learning several things about myself and the Hubby during this challenge. The most important of which is the variety of fruits and vegetables I will eat versus the very limited starch-only vegetables the Hubby will eat (point number 1). He is an odd one I tell you. He doesn't like fruit.--ASIDE: What kind of weird person doesn't eat fruit?!-- Making it very hard to find and eat local produce which both of us like.

I also hate making dinner, while loving to cook (point number two). So the idea of going shopping for raw produce to make dinner...well lets just say I often find reasons to skip that particular errand. This makes it very difficult to START dinner, but once I get going it's actually rather fun.

Thankfully, we have other hobbies involving food, which help bridge this gap (point number three). We brew our own beer, which I don't drink, but have fun helping. Here it is chilling before we transfer it into the second bucket for a week long siesta, i.e. fermentation period.
Believe it or not the house doesn't really smell while making this India Pale Ale.

It rather fun to locate nearby retailers and brewmasters to share experiences and ideas. And as an added bonus, we often find out about local suppliers for the foodstuffs. So, OLS has a way of showing up in our lives without a meal! (point number three, a.)

We also like to make our own blackberry jelly and picking the wild blackberries around our house, at the park where we walk the dog, or at work on the school grounds allows us to enjoy the same activities we did when we were little. Although, this time we aren't putting the berries directly into our mouths...Without knowing it we have been supporting one of the biggest producers of all time* before I even understood what it meant to eat local. (point number three, b.)


However, today I made a very exciting breakthrough on point number one. I love fried squash, fried okra, steamed broccoli, raw carrots, fresh spinach, creamed corn, red smashed potatoes, green beans practically any way you serve them, and peas especially with water chestnuts...well, just about any veggie. My husband as I stated earlier eats-baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, french fries, hash browns, and the occasional sweet potato. Pretty much he eats starch. So as a *compromise* we pretty much only have things he'll actually eat for dinner. But today was different.

Today he ate squash. And he liked it!

I am very proud to present: Squash (incognito) Fritters with chilled peaches and blackberries. Also known as dinner number two for my One Local Summer challenge.


Fresh Squash: 0 miles, a coworker brought some in from her garden to share.
(Fritters include, grated squash, 1 small onion, eggs, flour, cornmeal and seasonings.)
Blackberries: 0 to 1 miles depending on where and when we got them.
Peaches: not locally grown and I have to say not at good as the rest.

I'm learning that weather, I choose to eat local or not, somehow you find yourself eating locally anyway! (Point number 5.)
*Mother Nature, of course silly!

The First Supper

Today was the day my friends. We at here at the Manor (not really, but it's fun to call your house and yard with gardens a manor) had our first local side dish made with cukes from our own garden. It's a wonderfully easy dish to make and goes perfect on a hot summer day.

Cucumber Salad

two medium cukes (from garden 0 miles)
1/3 c cider or white vinegar
1/3 c water
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
dash of dillweed

Slice the cucumbers thin. Add all ingredients except dill. Chill for 3 hours. Drain and serve with a sprinkling of dill.

You can also leave the cuke slices in the syrup (sauce?) if you don't eat them all at once, but it's pretty hard not to gobble them all down at once. This dish is so good even the meat and potato eating Husband approves. It's only my first local dish, so it's relatively simple, but I am pleased as punch about it. Hopefully, this will be the start of healthier and more aware family.

One of the added benefits to OLS I haven't seen written about yet is that it gets lots of veggies into you and your family. Farm fresh veggies are so much tastier than store bought fresh veggies and certainly better than canned veggies. You can trust me on this one, because I am the worlds pickiest eater. My mother tells story of taking me to visit some of her relatives in Tennessee when I was about two. These relative happened to live on several acres and kept a large "hobby garden" about two acres big. While staying with them, my mother noticed that I would eat four times the amount of vegetables that I normally ate. "Huge, heaping platefuls," which makes a very happy mother, especially when her child's diet is more bird-like. "She just picks at her food." Ecstatic at this revolutionary development in my diet, when we returned home my mother bought tons and tons of vegetables from the grocery store, only to discover that I would turn my nose up at anything she served. Thankfully, my mother is brilliant (don't you dare tell her I said that) and quickly realized that it was the fresh picked produce which got me eating so much. Unfortunately, we did not have a garden at that time.

See the moral? Farm fresh veggies are so much tastier than store bought fresh veggies and certainly better than canned veggies.

We also had meat, which may or may not have been local. We went to the "farmer's market" on the square which happens every Saturday and bought some pork from a butcher's shop which advertised as "fresh from the farm." Though, when I asked if any of the meat was local the reply came that the beef came from Kansas City, the poultry from Mississippi and the pork was just "local." It was very tasty, but I think I will be buying from there again for my OLS challenge.

Pork chops with a Caribbean rub